government’s interest in public health and welfare has long since been recognized as justifying invasive measures that proportionally benefit the population’s health.120 Thus, expanding newborn screening to include the whole
genome would be constitutionally valid so long as the expansive cumulative
benefits of such an expansion are deemed greater.

VII. CONCLUSIONIt is easy to postulate about the revolutionary changes a WGS newbornscreening approach could have on future research and individual and popu-lation health outcomes. Such changes could include early diagnoses of ge-netic disorders prior to the child becoming symptomatic. Research pro-grams and research funding could prospectively be targeted to certaindisorders for which a large percentage of the population is at risk. If a WGSapproach to newborn screening is to co-exist or replace the traditional heelstick blood spot newborn screening programs currently in existence, nu-merous legal changes will need to examined and implemented. Statutoryand regulatory codes will need to be amended and adjusted for the inclusionof routine gathering of genetic information through newborn screening. Pol-icymakers can use prior legal challenges to existing newborn screening pro-grams as a model for developing sound legal and ethical policies for futurerealization of a WGS approach to newborn screening

120. See id. See also LAWRENCE O. GOSTIN, PUBLIC HEALTH LAW: POWER, DUTY,
RESTRAINT 126-28 (2nd ed. 2008) (stating that public health powers are constitutionally permissible if exercised in agreement with the following five standards: public health necessity,
reasonable means, proportionality, harm avoidance, and fairness).